Behind bars in D.C., many incarcerated people seeking solace turn to music. They write poems and songs. They share them in small gatherings. They rap and sing, accompanied by thumping feet and snapping fingers.
It’s a rhythmic art form, usually heard only live, in brief moments, in the confines of D.C.’s Correctional Treatment Facility. But in June, several incarcerated artists gathered in the jail chapel to hear the songs they wrote like never before: played from speakers, accompanied by keyboards, guitar riffs and voices from the outside world. Their songs had been interpreted by D.C.-area musicians and turned into professionally recorded tracks.
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Dasani Dawson perked up as her song, “Jail Calls,” came on, and her words played back, tweaked slightly, with a head-bobbing reggae bass line and an ethereal background melody.
Judge threw me eight
But tried for life
You know that this ain’t for me
My older sister said she’s pregnant
Hope she has a boy
And I’ll make sure he grows up straight
And lives a life of joy
Marquis Funderburk was surprised to hear his fast-paced flow on “Perfect Timing,” a rap he wrote about forging a music career after he is released from jail, transformed into a slow, soulful pop song.
Right now I’m just some coal, but just wait I’ll be a diamond
My brothers gon’ be happy when they see me out there shining
I never went to class I’m in the hallways making music
I only like the beats with the piano and acoustic
The listening session in the jail chapel was the culmination of a months-long project that gave Dawson, Funderburk and other incarcerated musicians the chance to hear their compositions set to music as intricately produced tracks, recorded by professional artists and bands.
The project, dubbed “Out of Our Cells,” was the brainchild of husband-and-wife musicians Aram Sinnreich and Dunia Best, who set out to record and promote music written by people incarcerated in the District. Their verses, which included messages to families, love ballads and protest songs, were a vital form of self-expression and release behind bars. Sinnreich wanted the world to hear them.
“There’s so much intelligence and humor and soul on display,” Sinnreich said. “The talent of these composers is undeniable.”
The idea for Out of Our Cells came years ago from another community music project, “Out of Our Shells,” that Sinnreich and Best organized during the pandemic in 2021. The couple spent a year recording songs for artists in the D.C. region who had lost access to recording studios and gigs because of the pandemic.
In April 2023, they visited the jail as guest lecturers in a Georgetown University prison education program and spoke about the “Out of Our Shells” project from the pandemic. Excited by what they heard, those in attendance told Sinnreich and Best that there were talented writers and musicians in the jail, too. Could the couple produce music for them?
Sinnreich and Best were excited by the idea. They selected songs and poems written by five people incarcerated at the Correctional Treatment Facility, which neighbors the D.C. jail.
Funderburk is awaiting sentencing for an armed carjacking charge from 2022 and was previously convicted of two armed robberies in 2022. Dawson has pleaded not guilty to charges including murder and armed robbery from a 2022 homicide and previously pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in a 2022 shooting that left her victim paralyzed. Others in the project are charged with or are awaiting sentencing for offenses including murder and distribution of child p*rnography.
Sinnreich and Best said they didn’t ask about the charges the incarcerated artists faced before working with them and sought to focus solely on their musical compositions. All of the artists involved were accepted into an education program run by Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, he added.
“This project … it’s not about forgiving or forgetting or valorizing,” Sinnreich said. “It’s about creating opportunities so people can be more than just one terrible thing that they did.”
Sinnreich and Best visited the jail in November to pick the songs they would produce. Ahead of their visit, they asked staff members to circulate fliers about the project. About 20 people joined them in the facility’s classroom.
One by one, they shared their songs, rapping or singing a cappella. It started nervously, Sinnreich said, but an infectious energy took over. The whole room was snapping and clapping along.
“It became kind of like a party,” Sinnreich said. “… Everybody all of sudden wanted to share.”
For those incarcerated, writing allows them to vent about a lonely, alienating experience, Funderburk said.
“A lot of people use it as a way to cope,” said Funderburk. “A lot of people use it as a way to express themselves.”
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Writing poetry has also brought respite for Harold Cunningham, another inmate involved in the project who is serving a life sentence for a string of armed robberies and murders in the District in 1993. He is currently incarcerated at the Correctional Treatment Facility as he awaits rulings on post-trial motions. For the project, Cunningham submitted a poem he’d written called “Media Master,” about biases in media coverage of crimes committed by Black people.
Cunningham, who has written about struggling with his mental health while in solitary confinement and alleged in a 2012 lawsuit that he was denied mental health services while in a federal prison, said programs like the Out of Our Cells project can have a deep impact on the lives of those who are incarcerated.
“Most people get involved with drugs and stuff because they don’t have no other outlet,” Cunningham said. “But when you can have something like your raps and your poetry … if you’re doing something constructive like this, your day goes by and you look forward to the next day.”
After picking songs in November, Sinnreich and Best took a cappella recordings or handwritten lyrics from the jail and presented them to D.C.-area bands and artists, challenging them to take those words and melodies and arrange them into fully realized songs.
Over the spring, Sinnreich, Best and the artists developed and recorded their interpretations. They also drew up contracts giving the incarcerated artists ownership of their songs. The couple’s band, Dunia & Aram, working with fellow musician Todd Nocera, performed Dawson’s “Jail Cells,” with Best on vocals. By June, they were ready to share the eight finished tracks with the jail.
Dozens gathered in the jail’s chapel one afternoon in early June to listen as Sinnreich and Best played the tracks from a laptop. One by one, the incarcerated artists heard their songs spring to life. They broke into smiles of recognition, and sometimes surprise, as the songs they had heard only a cappella veered into pop, R&B and reggae.
“[They] slowed it down, made the audience be able to feel it a little bit more,” Funderburk said approvingly of Jay Hammond and Bash House, who adapted his song. “I liked it.”
Applause rippled through the chapel as the listening session ended. A buzz of excitement lingered. Funderburk and other artists, urged on by their friends, stood up to perform new songs a cappella. Sinnreich assured the crowd that the project wasn’t over and that he and Best were seeking funding to return to the jail and record more songs.
Sinnreich said he plans to release the completed album of songs from the Out of Our Cells project online next month. He also hopes to organize a concert at the jail to have the tracks performed live.
From the side of the room, Angela Milhouse listened with rapt attention. Milhouse, who is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of an unregistered firearm, had jotted down her thoughts about each song in a notebook on her lap. By the end of the afternoon, she’d started writing the first few lines of her own poem, “Broken,” on the next page. Hearing the lyrics of her peers had helped Milhouse find the words, she said, for “thoughts that I have suppressed for so long.”
Milhouse, who was incarcerated after the project began, said she’d be eager to put her poem forward if Sinnreich and Best return to record more songs at the jail. But she also longed for an even brighter future.
“I hope I won’t be here,” Milhouse said. “I want to go home. … I’ll still be writing.”
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